Lie to Me, FEMA
We have to admit, we like the idea of bringing in magical "deception experts" when the fingerpointing starts after a local disaster. That's what happened on Lie to Me this week. Dr. Lightman and Foster were there to figure out who's lying when nobody wants to take responsibility. A new building under construction collapsed. What exactly happened? Who's fault is it? Why is the rescue effort taking so long? Yeah, it's all about the lies.
Vote in the poll now, leave comments about what you thought of the episode, and read the full recap after the jump!
Vote in the poll now, leave comments about what you thought of the episode, and read the full recap after the jump!
Right, we don't get to see the big explosion at the beginning, but we get to see all the flashing lights and smoke and angry people yelling at each other. The perfect environment to drop Dr. Lightman in and see what happens. FEMA does just that, because that's how they roll.
So a building has collapsed, killing several construction workers. Tragedy, right? Well, to make it worse there are still three men unaccounted for and the search so far has yielded nothing. All the interested parties (mayor, construction company owner, city engineers etc.) are screaming at each other in frustration and FEMA is trying to be heroic. So Dr. Lightman is brought in to help sort out the mess.
Dr. Foster arrives pretty soon to keep her boss from offending everybody. Between the two of them, they get down to the real work of uncovering the lies. First target? The guy who last saw the missing men. He said he stepped out for a potty break and was gone just a few minutes when the place blew up and collapsed, trapping his friends right where he left them. So that's where they've been searching. Of course.
Dr. Lightman sees a few flaws in the way this story gets told. No signs of guilt from the guy who walked away from his friends without a scratch. One fun fact they're told is that this particular worker had a neck injury on the job last year, but otherwise has an unremarkable work history. So Dr. Lightman tests him on his ability to recognize emotion, and the only one he gets right is disgust. Apparently this is common among some people addicted to opiates. (Because all they see from friends and family is that one expression.) So Foster explains that they've caught him out -- he didn't just step away for a few minutes to answer the call of nature. He started taking heavy painkillers for his neck injury and got hooked. Didn't he? DIDN'T HE?
Um, yes. He breaks down and admits he was getting high and has no idea how long he was away from his friends before the building blew. "Not more than an hour." So yeah, they need to expand the search area.
And find the men alive! One is injurred, but if they get to him soon enough they can save him. The rush is on to drill down to where they're trapped. But Dr. Lightman isn't done yet. Oh no. He notices on a video feed they get down to the men that one of them doesn't look happy when they're told they'll be rescued. Oops. Was he the one who blew up the building?
The Dr.s Lightman and Foster go hunt down his wife to find out if he was suicidal or insane. Nope. The wife is hiding something, though. They stalk her for a while and see her standing way too close to the owner of the construction company. Yep, they were romantically involved when the marriage was already on the rocks, but then she returned to her husband suddenly with no explanation. He admits it all.
Could this be the guy? Did he do this to kill her husband and win her back? Let's go ask him! Ah, nope, he's telling the truth there too. Not that dumb, I guess.
So Dr. Lightman goes back to study the video, of course. There's more in that suspicious face.... he sends it back to TMI Boy at the office to study in minute detail and ahah! The construction worker has Multiple Sclerosis. That's what brought his wife back to him so suddenly. He told her he was sick. She came back to nurture him.
And when the video feed underground comes back up, the Drs. Lightman and Foster confront him about it and discover the reason for the wacky microexpression earlier. He's feeling guilty because he kept his illness a secret from his employer (and insurance company) and he thinks he's responsible for the building blowing up because his hands were shaking really bad and he dropped his blow torch down an unfinished elevator shaft. Then everything went up. He suspects the tank exploded when it hit the bottom and blew out the foundations or something. Poor guy.
Dr. Lightman thinks there's more to it than that. During a press conference he noticed that the Mayor was lying when she said nothing illegal had happened at this construction site. Under pressure from the human lie detectors, she admits that she rushed things to get the factory built quickly and pushed to get extra local guys hired on.
Turns out she bribed the city engineers to okay the project without doing a complete assessment of the site. Yep, this here factory was being built over an old landfill, which is leaking methane into the newly-built basements. So it was a combination of the blow torch being dropped because the worker was hiding his illness, and the methane not being taken care of because the Mayor was hiding the lack of a safety assessment. When those lies collided, people died.
And that's when it occurs to our heros that methane could still be building up down there, and a spark from the rescue drill could set it off again. They try to warn FEMA, but FEMA is being heroic, remember? So they ignore the warnings and forge ahead. So instead they warn the men to get away from the drill.
This is where we get our big explosion. It was very pretty, but not all of our trapped guys got out alive. The guy who dropped the blowtorch urged his friends to go first. Sigh.
The whole experience seems to have driven Dr. Lightman to drink. We see him at the end of the episode back in his office polishing off lots of little bottles of alcahol. (Bought on the plane back? Found in the minibar in the hotel? Handed out by FEMA? Who knows.) Foster arrives soon with a big bottle of hooch and some company. Or at least philosophizing. Ah, the secrets we keep. We think they're innocent enough, but we never know how they'll react when they come in contact with other people's "innocent" secrets.
Yes, there was a B plot in this episode, but let's just say it was minor. TMI-Boy was a bit of a meanie, but once again The New Girl saved him from ruining people's lives. There was a little humor in it, but not much. Basically a very very rich man paid them a whole lot of money to find out if his girlfriend is a gold digger. The answer? Well, maybe a little bit. But she's really gorgeous, and does he love her just for her looks? Pot, kettle, black. (Pocket the cash and run away.)
So a building has collapsed, killing several construction workers. Tragedy, right? Well, to make it worse there are still three men unaccounted for and the search so far has yielded nothing. All the interested parties (mayor, construction company owner, city engineers etc.) are screaming at each other in frustration and FEMA is trying to be heroic. So Dr. Lightman is brought in to help sort out the mess.
Dr. Foster arrives pretty soon to keep her boss from offending everybody. Between the two of them, they get down to the real work of uncovering the lies. First target? The guy who last saw the missing men. He said he stepped out for a potty break and was gone just a few minutes when the place blew up and collapsed, trapping his friends right where he left them. So that's where they've been searching. Of course.
Dr. Lightman sees a few flaws in the way this story gets told. No signs of guilt from the guy who walked away from his friends without a scratch. One fun fact they're told is that this particular worker had a neck injury on the job last year, but otherwise has an unremarkable work history. So Dr. Lightman tests him on his ability to recognize emotion, and the only one he gets right is disgust. Apparently this is common among some people addicted to opiates. (Because all they see from friends and family is that one expression.) So Foster explains that they've caught him out -- he didn't just step away for a few minutes to answer the call of nature. He started taking heavy painkillers for his neck injury and got hooked. Didn't he? DIDN'T HE?
Um, yes. He breaks down and admits he was getting high and has no idea how long he was away from his friends before the building blew. "Not more than an hour." So yeah, they need to expand the search area.
And find the men alive! One is injurred, but if they get to him soon enough they can save him. The rush is on to drill down to where they're trapped. But Dr. Lightman isn't done yet. Oh no. He notices on a video feed they get down to the men that one of them doesn't look happy when they're told they'll be rescued. Oops. Was he the one who blew up the building?
The Dr.s Lightman and Foster go hunt down his wife to find out if he was suicidal or insane. Nope. The wife is hiding something, though. They stalk her for a while and see her standing way too close to the owner of the construction company. Yep, they were romantically involved when the marriage was already on the rocks, but then she returned to her husband suddenly with no explanation. He admits it all.
Could this be the guy? Did he do this to kill her husband and win her back? Let's go ask him! Ah, nope, he's telling the truth there too. Not that dumb, I guess.
So Dr. Lightman goes back to study the video, of course. There's more in that suspicious face.... he sends it back to TMI Boy at the office to study in minute detail and ahah! The construction worker has Multiple Sclerosis. That's what brought his wife back to him so suddenly. He told her he was sick. She came back to nurture him.
And when the video feed underground comes back up, the Drs. Lightman and Foster confront him about it and discover the reason for the wacky microexpression earlier. He's feeling guilty because he kept his illness a secret from his employer (and insurance company) and he thinks he's responsible for the building blowing up because his hands were shaking really bad and he dropped his blow torch down an unfinished elevator shaft. Then everything went up. He suspects the tank exploded when it hit the bottom and blew out the foundations or something. Poor guy.
Dr. Lightman thinks there's more to it than that. During a press conference he noticed that the Mayor was lying when she said nothing illegal had happened at this construction site. Under pressure from the human lie detectors, she admits that she rushed things to get the factory built quickly and pushed to get extra local guys hired on.
Turns out she bribed the city engineers to okay the project without doing a complete assessment of the site. Yep, this here factory was being built over an old landfill, which is leaking methane into the newly-built basements. So it was a combination of the blow torch being dropped because the worker was hiding his illness, and the methane not being taken care of because the Mayor was hiding the lack of a safety assessment. When those lies collided, people died.
And that's when it occurs to our heros that methane could still be building up down there, and a spark from the rescue drill could set it off again. They try to warn FEMA, but FEMA is being heroic, remember? So they ignore the warnings and forge ahead. So instead they warn the men to get away from the drill.
This is where we get our big explosion. It was very pretty, but not all of our trapped guys got out alive. The guy who dropped the blowtorch urged his friends to go first. Sigh.
The whole experience seems to have driven Dr. Lightman to drink. We see him at the end of the episode back in his office polishing off lots of little bottles of alcahol. (Bought on the plane back? Found in the minibar in the hotel? Handed out by FEMA? Who knows.) Foster arrives soon with a big bottle of hooch and some company. Or at least philosophizing. Ah, the secrets we keep. We think they're innocent enough, but we never know how they'll react when they come in contact with other people's "innocent" secrets.
Yes, there was a B plot in this episode, but let's just say it was minor. TMI-Boy was a bit of a meanie, but once again The New Girl saved him from ruining people's lives. There was a little humor in it, but not much. Basically a very very rich man paid them a whole lot of money to find out if his girlfriend is a gold digger. The answer? Well, maybe a little bit. But she's really gorgeous, and does he love her just for her looks? Pot, kettle, black. (Pocket the cash and run away.)